Food for Thought

Food for Thought Book Discussion

Led by Mount Prospect Public Library Readers’ Advisors, the Food for Thought Book Discussions will give you food for thought all year! Food for Thought selections offer a variety of books ranging from classics to non-fiction to popular fiction. This book discussion meets on the first Wednesday of each month in Meeting Room B in two sessions: Session 1 meets from noon-1 p.m. and Session 2 meets from 2-3 p.m. Books will be available 30 days prior to the discussion at the Fiction/AV/Teen Services desk.

April 3

Describes the true story of Elizebeth Smith, a Shakespeare expert, who met and married a groundbreaking cryptologist and worked to discover and expose Nazi spy rings in South America by cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine.

May 1

When Major Gryffth Hockaday is called to the front lines of the Civil War, his new bride is left to care for her husband’s three-hundred-acre farm and infant son. Placidia, a mere teenager herself living far from her family and completely unprepared to run a farm or raise a child, must endure the darkest days of the war on her own. By the time Major Hockaday returns two years later, Placidia is bound for jail, accused of having borne a child in his absence and murdering it. What really
transpired in the two years he was away?

June 5

A 10-year-old girl in a small conventional Texas community resolves to keep up with her aging, crazy-as-a-fox mother in order to keep them both alive and learn the truth about her mother's long-secret past.

July 3

Greer Kadetsky is a shy college freshman when she meets Faith Frank, a central pillar of the women's movement for decades, who inspires others to influence the world. Though madly in love with her boyfriend, Greer longs for a sense of purpose, and Faith leads Greer down the most exciting path of her life as it winds away from her meant-to-be love story and toward the future she'd always imagined.

August 7

Presents a true account of the early twentieth-century murders of dozens of wealthy Osage and law-enforcement officials, citing the contributions and missteps of a fledgling FBI that eventually uncovered one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

September 4

On the day John F. Kennedy is inaugurated, Claire, a young wife and mother obsessed with the glamour of Jackie, struggles over the decision of whether to stay in a loveless but secure marriage or to follow the man she loves and whose baby she may be carrying. Decades earlier in 1919, Vivien Lowe, an obituary writer, is searching for her lover who disappeared in the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. The surprising connection between these two women will change Claire's life in unexpected and extraordinary ways.

October 2

Ted—a gay, single, struggling writer is stuck: unable to open himself up to intimacy except through the steadfast companionship of Lily, his elderly dachshund. When Lily’s health is compromised, Ted vows to save her by any means necessary. By turns hilarious and poignant, an adventure with spins into magic realism and beautifully evoked truths of loss and longing, this is a tale that reminds us how it feels to love fiercely, how difficult it can be to let go, and how the fight for those we love is the greatest fight of all.

November 6

If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life? It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and the Gold children--four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness--sneak out to hear their fortunes. The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.

December 4

Celestial and Roy are newly married professionals leaning in to a bright future when Roy is convicted of a crime he did not commit. This is not a heroes vs. villains tale with a tidy resolution. It is a complicated, messy, moving, and thought-provoking story about love, family, and the wide-reaching effects of incarceration.